Fair Scheduling Models for Doubles Group Competitions

This paper gives integer linear programming models for scheduling doubles tennis group competitions. The goal is to build a fair and competitive schedule for all players. Our basic model achieves that for each player the average ranking of his partners in all matches is as close as possible to the average ranking of his opponents in all matches. One of the variations of the basic model provides that each matchup is fair and competitive. We also give models for the case when the number of players is 4n + 2, and thus one of the matches has to be singles. Our models were implemented and tested using optimization software AMPL. Computational results along with schedules for some typical situations are also given the paper.